On this day in 1976, David Bowie took one of the most suave, epically dashing, mugshots of all time.
Bowie spent the first five months of 1976 on the Isolar tour of his 1976 full-length, Station to Station. It’s the album notorious for being recorded while Bowie was living in LA, fuelled in large part by extreme cocaine psychosis.
On the night of 20 March 1976 after performing at Community War Memorial Arena in Rochester, NY, Bowie retired to the Americana Rochester Hotel for a party with Iggy Pop and some new friends.
Among those new friends: a couple of undercover female police officers, working on a tip that Bowie was traveling with cocaine. While the cops never found any blow the presence of marijuana was more than enough for the authorities to barge into the room.
At 2:25 a.m. in the early morning hours of 21 March, four vice squad detectives and a State Police investigator confiscated “about half a pound of marijuana” from three-bedroom hotel suite.
“They were held in the Monroe County Jail for a few hours. They were charged with fifth-degree criminal possession of marijuana, carrying a maximum sentence of fifteen years in prison,” according to the Democrat and Chronicle at the time.
Bowie paid everyone’s bail and went right back on tour, playing that very evening in Springfield, MA.
The charges against Bowie and the others were eventually dismissed after a grand jury decline to indict.
“Fashion, turn to the left
Fashion, turn to the right
Beep-beep”
Read also SPACE ODDITY.
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Photos: Hint Fashion Magazine and davidbowie.com.
Video: NBC.
Text: Flood Magazine and Peta Pixel.
